Snowden Shows China Needs to Improve Network, Global Times Says

By Bloomberg News -
Jun 23, 2013

Former National Security Agency
contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations of U.S. spy programs
benefit the world and show that China must catch up in network
security, the Asian nation’s state-run Global Times newspaper
said.

Snowden’s disclosures of the classified intelligence
activities exposed the “extraordinary hegemony” of the U.S. as
well as its cyber-espionage and infringement of civil rights,
the newspaper said. That’s put the U.S. “on the moral back
foot,” it said.

Snowden left Hong Kong yesterday for Moscow after the city
turned down a U.S. arrest warrant, and is now seeking asylum in
Ecuador. U.S. officials have expressed anger at China and Russia
for their role in allowing him to leave Hong Kong, whose foreign
and defense relations are determined by Beijing.

U.S. accusations against China on Internet security have
gained momentum while “the reality is that the U.S. itself can
attack China almost at will,” the Global Times editorial said.
China needs to have a “sense of urgency” in developing its
Internet technology, it said.

Snowden fled the U.S. before revealing himself as the
source of leaks about National Security Agency programs to the
Guardian and Washington Post newspapers. His departure from Hong
Kong followed a report in yesterday’s Sunday Morning Post that
cited Snowden as saying the U.S. National Security Agency hacked
Chinese mobile-phone text messages.

Mainframe Computers

In the first five months of this year a total of 4,062
U.S.-based control servers hijacked 2.91 million mainframe
computers in China, the China Daily newspaper reported today,
citing the National Computer Network Emergency Response
Technical Team Coordination Center of China.

Snowden revealed that Tsinghua University, one of China’s
top universities, was a target of extensive U.S. hacking, the
South China Morning Post reported. On a single day in January,
at least 63 computers and servers were hacked into, it said.

China has expressed “serious concern” about the reports
of U.S. government cyber attacks against China, Foreign Ministry
spokeswoman Hua Chunying said, and filed a protest to the U.S.